“Effective business transformation happens when the IT organization is fully engaged and seen as part of the business.”– Stephen Little, chief information officer at Xerox.

(Editor’s Note: Stephen reviews some of the major points that he made during a keynote address to the 8th Confare CIO SUMMIT on March 25 in Vienna.)

I’ve experienced and led many shifts in the evolution of information technology over the last 40 years. From data processing with punch cards to sophisticated code; network email to mobile and social applications; on premise Enterprise Resource Planning to cloud based solutions. The list goes on.

Managing change isn’t new for chief information officers.

We are immersed in day-to-day decisions that keep the business running securely and smoothly. We’re also involved in complex, global transformation initiatives. As technology evolves, consumers and employees discover new ways of working more efficiently.

My job is much more than installing the latest technological solutions; it’s about integrated, strategic partnerships, and planning that removes complexity and simplifies business operations. This includes taking a pragmatic approach to identifying and retiring legacy systems and applications that hinder our ability to take advantage of new technological advancements.

Business Partners, not Order-Takers

I see the role of the CIO as a lever for business transformation. CIOs and the people who work for us aren’t just technologists, we’re business leaders.

Years ago, it was fair to view the IT department as order-takers. Need some technology? Pick up the phone, order it, and we’ll install it. But business has changed – the world has changed. If all you do today is install technology and walk away, then you should not be surprised if you miss on goals like employee productivity, enhanced customer experiences or improved business processes. Yes, technology advances progress, but it must be the right technology that is implemented sensibly.

True transformation requires partnerships all over the company – up, down and across every organization. Today, CIOs touch customer’s from every industry, and work with leaders and teams everywhere, including our partners and vendors. Our IT teams must understand the challenges colleagues and customers face, and grasp the market pressures that impact profit and loss decision making. We are expected to recommend technology solutions that will allow our business to succeed and grow.

Pizza Parlors Versus Dietitians

Here’s an analogy I like to use. Employees in the IT department of years past were like pizza order-takers who filled their customers bellies — not a bad thing, in fact, quite useful in its own way. Today, the desired state is to be more like dietitians who collaborate with you to make good decisions, execute appropriate changes, and deliver positive outcomes.

This journey from order-taker to trusted business partner means that our people must engage in conversations that get to the root of the problem, and reveal viable solutions. This is nothing less than a culture change – not only for our people, but for the rest of the company.

It’s important to avoid making promises to requests that cannot be delivered. We use that moment to shape and influence the conversation into something that makes sense for the business overall, and we have that conversation in terms that everyone understands.

But one point is simple: Effective business transformation happens when the IT organizations are fully engaged and seen as part of “the business.”

Allyson Burroughs is vice president of marketing and communications for the Xerox Government Health Solutions group. She’s also a mom, wife, runner, Girl Scout troop leader and healthcare access advocate.

I’m a bit of a study in “How to Learn Things the Hard Way.”

I didn’t always believe I needed to ask for help, think about what professional skills I needed to hone, or critically consider how I wanted to shape my career. My mom likes to remind me of my favorite turn of phrase when I first learned to talk: “I do myself!”

Developing a relationship with a mentor can be incredibly rewarding, and an important component to developing your professional skills and managing your career. I’m lucky to count some talented executives and amazing colleagues as mentors.

I’m hard-wired to think I should figure things out and do them on my own, so thank goodness I crossed paths with them. Which brings me to my first tip on building your own board of directors and using mentors to help you manage your career development:

You don’t have to do it alone

It’s important to remember that everyone needs to ask for help. In this season of March Madness, does a basketball team win without great coaching? No way. Do Oscar-winning actors get on that award stage without a host of input from directors and acting coaches? Not a chance. You might feel like you should be able to figure everything out on your own – that’s certainly my first reaction to just about everything. But professional development doesn’t happen without positive influence from outside sources. Don’t hold yourself back: Ask for input, assistance and constructive criticism.

Assess yourself

One incredibly powerful planning tool in business is the SWOT analysis. The SWOT – a process for identifying an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats – is a great way to assess where a business is, what it needs to work on, how it can grow and what market changes might put it at risk.

You can use this assessment tool to take a close look at your own personal strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and challenges; it will also help you identify the types of professionals who can help you grow. Are you really good with financials and budget planning, but perhaps you haven’t managed staff and would like to grow into a management role? What are the immediate opportunities for advancement and growth in your organization? What are some challenges you face that might hold you back or that you need to work through? Take a hard look at these elements so you can build a great plan of action to identify the types of professionals you should approach about mentorship, and how best to work with them.

Be clear and creative – and be honest

Be clear with what you hope to get out of the relationship. Set goals with your mentor on what you’d like input on, and work together to come up with ideas for how you might get the experience you need — or at least set yourself up to be considered for stretch assignments and projects that can help you grow.

Honesty goes hand in hand with clarity. You have to be honest with yourself about where you are and what you need to work on so that your mentor can truly be of value. Establishing goals that you both agree to in writing is helpful, as is setting a timeline and a regular cadence for meeting. Your sessions can be in person or over the phone, but regularity is critical.

Getting what you want out of your career takes work, focus, enthusiasm and all those other wonderful words that get repeated a lot. It also takes input from great people who’ve had experiences you haven’t – because no one person knows everything or can do everything by themselves.

By 2020, your customers will manage 85 percent of their brand relationships without interacting with a human – automation will dominate the customer experience. As a result call volumes will stagnate while digital interactions boom.

This leaves you to answer a potentially unsettling question about your company’s contact center: Does it satisfy and delight your customers, or does it incite disgruntled, unprofitable behavior? If your customer care structure follows the blueprint of the siloed support department anchored by a contact center with peripheral digital support portals, your unfortunate answer will be the latter.
Call centers are at the heart of a delicate equilibrium where they must satisfy both customer requests and operational performance indicators.

This is at odds with customer expectations; quicker, smarter support anywhere, anytime. Thanks to digital self-service, this equation sees call volumes fall with better customer care; forcing a new way of understanding the value, and cost, of the contact center.

The next frontier of differentiation

Differentiated customer care is emerging as a necessity. Here’s what I mean:

Aspirational high tech and lifestyle offerings create an expectation of over-and-above customer care. However, customer care policies and standards have created homogeny between competitors. With the customer experience unvarying across industries, price can emerge as a key differentiator.

This is a big problem because, when a customer chooses your brand based on price, your customer relationship is built on shaky foundations. While creating an excellent customer experience is a complex process, it is a proven path to differentiation. No one wants to be treated in a “standard” fashion, least of all paying customers.

Self-serve portals cannot instinctively go off-script to delight your customers, and — if left unchecked — tomorrow’s support could harbor further homogeny between service experiences. The solution is a “seats and software” outlook on customer care. Here, automated support learns from your agents’ best practices, and agents are empowered to pursue only one performance indicator: customer satisfaction.

How your brand chooses to execute this will define your differentiated customer experience. Customer care is increasingly no longer just an avenue to fulfil a need, but an opportunity to create a mutually beneficial relationship. Human relationships are not identical, brand relationships shouldn’t be either.

A soldier snakes through piles of burning rubble. He dives for a hot-spot to mask his heat signature from the alien aircraft that streaks high above. Suddenly he disintegrates, only to reappear on board his own starship

Before computer generated imagery, exorbitant production costs would limit such a scene to only the largest of budgets; often with results that were far from convincing. Today, the entire scene from a typical sci-fi thriller would be filmed in front of a green-screen, saving millions and blurring the line between reality and science fiction – thanks to the legacy of innovation here at Xerox. Our seminal contributions to the advancements of computer graphics and animation are examples of what happens when innovative ideas meet up with an industry.

In 1973, PARC scientist and visionary, Richard Shoup, changed the worlds of animation and graphic arts forever. He developed the world’s first fully-functional frame buffer system, called SuperPaint. It paved the way for digital imaging and much more. A combination of complex hardware and innovative software, SuperPaint digitized video, manipulated images, and allowed animators to create their own computer-generated artwork, and immediately output it to a laser printer or video.

Richard Shoup (top of page), in the first ever image that SuperPaint captured in April 1973. SuperPaint digitized the video signal to 8 bits, and was able to capture or combine it with other data. Photo courtesy of Richard Shoup, via the Xerox Historical Archives.

NASA used SuperPaint to produce animations of the Pioneer missions to Venus and Saturn. In 1983, Xerox and Shoup were each recognized with an Emmy for innovation in television video-graphics. (In 1998, Shoup was also honored by the Academy Awards). But perhaps the least acknowledged function of this revolutionary innovation is on the role it plays in everything we do with a computer today.

Animation and the office of the future

“I thought, even back (in 1973), that the office of the future definitely was going to have all sorts of imaging and graphics,” Shoup said.

Indeed, you would be hard-pressed to find a webpage or document that does not feature a computer-generated graphic. It’s also difficult to find a website that doesn’t have at least one embedded video. Shoup predicted that too. “What we were really expecting to see was a giant confluence of media; from office material like documents, to film and television.”

Shoup went on to co-found Aurora Systems, a company that specialized in digital animation systems, and the Boundary Institute for leading-edge physics and mathematics. Alvy Ray Smith, a PARC contractor who wrote significant routines that went into the software for SuperPaint, co-founded Pixar Animation Studios – home to classics such as “Toy Story,” “Cars,” and “The Incredibles.”

Before computers, copiers saved animation

Our heritage with graphic arts runs deeper than Shoup’s ground-breaking invention. A decade earlier, when Xerox was still known as Haloid, we collaborated with Walt Disney Productions on the iconic film, “101 Dalmatians.”

Early animation was a time-consuming, painstaking process that involved countless hours of drawing each frame, and then transferring the drawing to film, where artists would then add the colors that would bring the story to life – all by hand. Enter xerography.

With the ability to copy an artist’s work directly onto film, Disney cut costs and production time. But this was only one side of the innovation coin. Dick McKay, Publicity Director for Walt Disney Productions at the time, reported that the original process of transferring artistic drawings by hand to film “had a tendency to lose a little of the feeling originally imparted by the creators.” Xerography not only saved production time; it also had “the effect of transferring every artistic touch laid down by artists’ pencils directly to the screen and thus enormously improving the entertainment values of the animation.” Now being re-released on HD video, another generation will enjoy the result of our collaboration with Disney.

Technologies like xerography and SuperPaint allowed a number of companies to be unique and profitable. The end result benefits us all and changes our world forever.

People in your organization are excellent. They know their jobs inside and out. Some are even experts who run teams that are truly benchmark.

Turns out, that’s a big problem.

It’s a problem if you don’t have a system in place where people and teams can share knowledge, insights, or best practices. To be certain, everyone has a repository of data and documents that people on particular teams can access, but none of those repositories are connected. The result: Everyone has their own policies and procedures, and everyone has reinvented the wheel dozens of times over.

Carmala King, manager for Business Process Management and Sustainability in Xerox’s Global Purchasing group

“We learned that about ourselves when we first sought certification from the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply in 2009,” Carmala King, manager for Business Process Management and Sustainability in Xerox’s Global Purchasing group. “We learned many other things too. Suffice it to say, this certification helped Xerox become a better company.”

In general, the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply (CIPS) promotes and develops standards related to professional skill, ability and integrity among all members of an organization involved in supply chain management. This certific

ation enables companies to communicate key tenets of their processes, methodologies, core beliefs and ethical standards; and to do it effectively on a national or global scale.

Xerox Achieves CIPS’ Highest Level
The Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply has awarded its Platinum-level to Xerox, its highest certification. Learn more.

The benefit impacts the customers, who now have a firm set of expectations when engaging with a CIPS-certified company. In order to achieve this level of accreditation and proficiency, it’s useful for current procurement managers to know what elements should be in place to be compliant.

“A key goal is for every level of a company to remain consistent,” said Bob Davis, vice president of Global Business Systems at Xerox. “Though it may seem counter-intuitive, without consistency and standardization, it becomes difficult to provide the variability that’s required to meet the needs of a range of customers, which can include small- and medium-sized businesses as well as large enterprises.”

Bob Davis, vice president of Global Business Systems at Xerox

The Role of Central Governance

Defining a governance structure as well as demonstrating a commitment to govern are key first steps in defining your procurement process and execution. Central governance achieves a number of goals:

First, it allows you to attest back to CIPS that your processes are consistent, ethical, measured and align with predetermined expectations of those measurements. That is, you know the quantifiable outcomes ahead of time because you’ve standardized.

Standardization means that the same steps or processes are performed at every level of an organization. The resulting uniformity enables procurement processes to be executed more easily, whether on a regional, national or global scale. With a single purchasing environment, a workforce can focus more on procurement, increasing the value proposition for customers.

For example, modernizing the procurement process has enabled Xerox to standardize its infrastructure, which allowed the company to leave behind old processes that were designed around renting machine-level, graphic communications equipment to customers. “Xerox has steadily moved toward standardization of its infrastructure, which was once made up of many diverse systems,” Davis states.

Ultimately, transitioning to a unified environment ensures several outcomes. These include:

Increased organizational flexibility.

Improved differentiation of services.

Better service provisioning.

More accurate service charges.

Today, Xerox focuses on fulfilling the needs of customers across a whole array of services, software, consulting and technology. It’s a flexible, cost-efficient model that relies on standardization and central governance, the key components for CIPS certification and for streamlining supply chain management.

As procurement leaders explore the requirements for achieving CIPS compliance, they must recognize the importance of centralizing and governing the right processes. “CIPS certification allows you to say to customers: ‘When you engage us, this is what we will do.’ You have to choose that you’re going to govern that way,” says Davis. Only then will companies be able to create automation around those processes, further increasing the potential for success.

(This article was first published on Real Business, a website from Xerox that provides ideas and information for decision makers in business and government.)

Don’t want to wait until your Golden Years to spend your days lounging on a beach with a book in one hand and a piña colada in the other? Some may say, “dream on.” With the average retirement age creeping up, it has become increasingly difficult for Americans to cash out early.

As more companies phase out defined benefit pension plans in favor of 401(k) plans, the reality is that employees are saving less, according to Dean Aloise, managing director, wealth practice at Buck Consultants at Xerox.

“Say you’re 55 [years old] right now, you don’t have a DB [defined benefit] plan, and you haven’t saved enough. There is a cold reality: It’s going to be hard to retire early,” he says. “And there’s no doubt, people are working later [into their lives].”

But have no fear: With a little strategic planning, that white sand may not be as far off as you think.

Here are four steps to early retirement:

Save, save, save. The first key is not only to start saving early, but also to make sure you are saving the right amount. You’ll need 70 to 80 percent of your pre-retirement salary in retirement, Aloise says. While many people are used to saving five or six percent of their salary, a double-digit savings rate is likely what they’ll need to be comfortable in retirement.

Periodic Rate Adjustments. “When you have a savings rate, there needs to be a regular readjustment of that rate as the market changes,” Aloise says. “If an employee is enrolled at 11 percent and the market has a terrible year, maybe they need to go to 13 percent.”

Whether your employer offers a dedicated financial advisor or you have one yourself, you should periodically look at your savings accounts and 401(k) and adjust your rate accordingly.

Stick Around. Millennials have a tendency to job-hop, but employees who leave before they are fully vested in the company’s 401(k) could take a major hit in retirement. They missing out on a potential employer match and managing several accounts can get unwieldy.

“When you get to retirement and have seven different pots of money, it becomes hard to figure out how much you have,” Aloise says.

If you do have multiple accounts, consolidating them into one spot using a trusted centralized rollover service will make it easier to see what you have and manage it.

Retire in Phases. Phased retirement can be a good solution for employees who want to retire but need to continue saving before they can leave the workforce for good. “It allows employees to continue to save toward retirement, phasing themselves to four days a week and then down to three, or get to age 65 when Medicare really sets in,” Aloise says.

Whether you’re able to punch out for the last time at 50 or gradually phase out of the workforce closer to 70, the key is to save a larger portion of your check. “Those automatic savings rates are just not high enough and most people are realizing that a higher rate of savings is needed to get to those goals,” Aloise says.

“The important thing is saving enough and staying disciplined about it from early in your career all the way until the end.”

Dave Coplin is the Chief Envisioning Officer for Microsoft UK and an established thought leader on the role of technology in our personal and professional lives. He has worked across a wide range of industries and customers, providing strategic advice and guidance around the intersection of a modern society and technology both inside and outside of the world of work.

Dave Coplin is the CEO of Microsoft – but not the kind of CEO you might think. He’s Microsoft’s “Chief Envisioning Officer,” a role that has him coaching, guiding and encouraging employees and others about the use of technology in both work and play.

I recently got the chance to meet with Dave in London, during the Xerox Simple@ Work conference, and he fascinated me with his stories of our analog past and what companies are doing today to transform themselves in a digital age.

He shared with me the history of the keyboard. Typewriters were originally designed to prohibit writers from typing past a certain speed. Then why is the same design used on our laptops and smartphones today? “Because we’re human, we like past experiences and they shape our future experiences,” he said.

From the outset, he wanted me to understand that technology is only a tool, not a solution. “Put the people in the right place and supply them with the right technology, you’ll be on your way to transformation,” he said. After our 15-minute discussion, Dave left me with three lessons.

Lesson 1: Provide the Right Technology

Dave told me his days chasing people around to get them to care about technology are over. The tide has turned, he said. The employees at Microsoft are passionate about technology and want a better technical experience at work. At home they are able to use their Microsoft phone, Netflix, Facebook, Uber, and OneDrive easily, but struggle to get daily tasks done in the office in the same, seamless way

The IT infrastructure and red tape of any global enterprise can be difficult. But now that employees are engaged and pushing for new technologies and new applications, companies are moving their transformations to a higher level.

Lesson 2: Reimagine the Way We Work

Dave believes we’ve forgotten what productivity actually means. Our current definition “dates back to the industrial revolution. That is, output per unit of input,” he stated.

We have inherited these definitions from our very successful analog past — before the introduction of computers. But now, generally speaking, we’re at a stage where we continue to try to integrate new technology into old models. But technology now allows us to do things in new and different ways, Dave says.

By looking at technology through fresh eyes, and re-defining our purpose, organizations can then create processes that fit the opportunities of today. New processes lead to new outcomes through the addition of automation and streamlining. We then can redefine how we measure outcomes, Dave says.

Lesson 3: Engage Your Employees

Dave and I discussed the people part of the equation – how to get employees engaged, even as the technological transformation scales across the company.

Dave said the key word is engagement – true engagement. “Just because I put a second telephone on your desk doesn’t mean you’re going to be twice as productive, right?” he asked.

Technology is only half the story. The energy and imagination of your people is what truly drives a successful business.

To truly transform your company, whether you are 100 years old or a start-up, you must have the right people engaged. Have a purpose. Connect to employees on an emotional level. Give them a full chance to sign on to the mission and vision.

The Future is Ambiguous

The future is ambiguous by nature and many organizations are in fear of change. But to stay competitive in a digital economy, each business must start to peel back their layers and discuss what they can do better.

Once you are able to redefine your outcomes, select the right technologies and empower your people, you’ll be on your way to transformation.

Each lesson is difficult to master individually but when all three are achieved simultaneously your business will thrive.

This might describe you: Patients want to be active participants in their own care. They want to make decisions based on real-time information and results. And access to their providers outside of a scheduled appointment is more than convenient, it’s a requirement.

Welcome to the evolving world of patient engagement. This level of involvement from a patient (or the patient’s family) is a top indicator of a good healthcare outcome. The question is: How do we get there?

We now understand that patients who are engaged have better clinical outcomes. For example, the Millennial generation wants to view personalized recommendations to improve their health via an online patient portal. Baby Boomers account for the highest percentage of any age group, and they say they already do (or would) communicate with healthcare providers via a portal.[1] This is an opportunity for providers to use a mix of technology and services to tailor the appropriate engagement programs for their patients.

Heather Haugen, CEO and managing director, The Breakaway Group, A Xerox Company

Heather Haugen: As our payment models move toward payment for value, providers are starting to engage patients differently when managing chronic diseases like diabetes and asthma. This type of care will happen beyond the walls of the physician’s practice. We’ll see an increase in the use of remote monitoring tools. We’ll also see a new focus on engaging the family and caregivers, rather than just the patient.

Communication, planning and coordination with family is a strong indicator of overall patient engagement. The care process impacts the patient’s support system, so the family must be considered in the patient engagement equation. I also think the next generation patient portals will be more intuitive and interactive.

Can you share examples of ways hospitals have successfully changed their approach to patient engagement?

Tamara StClaire: I admire an initiative the Cleveland Clinic began several years ago. It allows patients to enter data and outcomes into their own records. This information becomes part of the clinical workflow, enabling doctors to track their patients’ progress, and potentially modify their care between visits. I’ve also seen some health networks take a very proactive approach to encouraging as many patients as possible to use the portal, including signage, mobile technology, and suggesting alternate ways to log on to the portal for those who don’t have Internet access at home.

Heather Haugen: The University of Colorado shares all test results real-time. For inpatients, and patients undergoing tests for illnesses like cancer, this level of access is important. Kaiser Permanente has focused on patient engagement for years. They offer patients the options to communicate with their providers via email, make appointments online, participate and sign up for clinical trials, and more through online tools.

(From the editor: This article was first published on RealBusiness.com, a website from Xerox that provides ideas and information for decision-makers in business and government.)

When it comes to human resource consulting services, many companies are on the lookout for jacks of more than one trade. Bundling – where a consultancy offering several services instead of just one — has become common in recent years. While the money saved by hiring one firm for multiple tasks is attractive, the philosophy behind bundling has evolved beyond simple economics.

A Matter of Chemistry

First, there’s the trust factor, which is crucial in an age where complex work has to be completed at light speed. Finding capable people and forming great chemistry with business partners is not easy. Let’s say a company has hired a retirement consultant team, and that team goes above and beyond on all aspects of the job. It makes sense to work with that team on other projects as well, instead of looking to other specialized firms.

“We’re seeing that be a real driver,” says Dean Aloise, managing director of the wealth practice at Buck Consultants at Xerox. “Benefits are ultimately impacting the lives of all employees, so when [businesses] find consultants who truly do bring the trust factor, they’re willing to build more services with them.”

New Benefits Requirements

The changing benefits system also increases the need for bundling. For example, with the decline of defined benefit plans and rise of defined contribution plans as the main retirement delivery vehicle for companies, there is a need for additional guidance on a wider scale.

“What we’re seeing more and more of is companies willing to bundle that investment consulting work with a true defined contribution plan consulting expert who can speak to design, governance, and compliance,” says Aloise. “In the past that didn’t really happen.”

This also becomes a need as the method of delivering employee benefits turns to a customer-centric model. “There’s an evolving market for consulting firms to deliver benefits directly to employees, really personalizing and customizing and having a business-to-consumer mindset,” says Aloise.

Keep it Simple

Finally, having one trusted vendor consult on several areas helps companies move toward an important goal in the modern business climate: simplifying work. Why complicate the process with multiple vendors when you can use just one?

“It definitely ties into that whole theme,” says Aloise. “There’s constantly a desire to streamline, to be more efficient, and minimize the number of vendors that need to be involved with a corporation. So bundling definitely helps get there.”

Pi in the eye: Light also travels as a wave. In fact, the radio signals and microwaves I mentioned earlier are simply a different “color” of light. So when you drive through a toll booth that reads your license plate, pi helps us describe how the light gets to the plate to illuminate it, how the reflected light travels back to the camera, and how that light travels through the lens. Pi helps the camera begin to make sense out of the signals it receives.

Photo of George Gibson, courtesy of George Gibson — and pi.

What’s true for license plate cameras is true for other cameras as well. When you scan or copy a document — or when you scan a three dimensional object for your 3D printer — the algorithms that describe how the light that hits the object, bounces off it, collects the light and analyzes it, all have pi at their heart.

Patriots’ Pi: Want to know what happened to those footballs in New England? The pressure inside those balls depended on the amount of air that was in them, the temperature, and the volume of the inside of the ball. Guess what: You need pi in order to calculate that volume!

George Gibson is a research and development manager for PARC, A Xerox Company; he is listed as co-inventor on 56 patents. He spends a fair amount of his spare time creating sound waves (that can be measured with pi) on Waldeau, his Martin D35 guitar.